Program 11: Shorts II

Saint Leroi
New York Premiere
Maurya Kerr, 2021, USA, 23m

Saint Leroi is a powerful, multilayered short film by Maurya Kerr about a Black avenging angel who has come down from on high. Amidst the foundational anti-Blackness of America, Saint Leroi posits Blackness as arbiter of justice and punisher of wrongs, thus challenging ideas of who is allowed judgment, vengeance, rapture, and rebirth. Whiteness has been taught that it created and owns everything, but Blackness knows it has the right to possess and inhabit every story, every sovereignty, every creation myth, every destruction, every history, present, and future imaginable. A trenchant indictment of the blood-stained hands of all those—past and present—who know what they’ve done, Saint Leroi is ultimately an expression of belonging, grief, and love. 

Twine
New York Premiere
Ana Contreras and Keely Song, 2022, USA, 4m
Through animation and dance, Twine explores what it means to dream and create beauty and magic from within. Directed by Ana Contreras and Keely Song, the frame-by-frame animations are playful and wondrous.

to be near you.
New York City Premiere
Ali Kenner Brodsky and Jarret Blinkhorn, 2021, USA, 11m
to be near you. pushes at the boundaries of time to create a feeling of reconnecting with something, or someone, who is gone. Based on a live duet between Ali Kenner Brodsky and Jenna Pollack, to be near you. honors the memory of those we have lost, collapses distance by energizing the spaces in between, and subtly demonstrates how people can find connection through physical separation.

Milez
New York Premiere
Early Era Collective, Stephanie Patrick, and Ben Lee, 2021, USA, 4m
Eight Early Era dancers inspect the systems by which we abide, and the sameness required of average people to operate within those systems. To the rhythms of Austin-based hip-hop duo Magna Carda, the artists must decide whether to stay within the boxes that confine them or break free. A unique visual experience featuring ingenious and playful imagery of dancers in their different spaces.

I Fall
New York Premiere
Dan Thorburn, 2022, UK, 11m
Created by Fallen Angels Dance Theatre together with users now in recovery, this visceral short explores the chaos and carnage of heroin addiction. Despite the despair of this twisted love story, hope and recovery are possible.

Future Futures
US Premiere
Brian J. Johnson and Company 605, 2022, Canada, 40m
How do we bring our physical bodies with us into our inevitably digitally-bound futures? Collaboratively conceived by director Brian J. Johnson and Vancouver’s acclaimed Company 605, Future Futures is a collection of five short dance films that explore the digital destiny of humankind through a unique merging of camera and visual effects with a specific choreographic vision. Embracing the absurdity of centering dance inside a sci-fi narrative, the experimental series collapses time to portray human culture at an unprecedented moment: the emergence of a new, autonomous, and intelligent being—the digital reflection and culmination of ourselves. Through its otherworldly imagery, choreography, and driving electronic sound score, Future Futures evolves into a strange, highly visual exploration of what we are if we are no longer tied to our physical bodies, and how we will define humanity when faced with a fading IRL existence.